Supervisor(s)
:

Rood, Stewart B.

Abstract:

River damming and offstream water diversion have led to the severe collapse of riparian cottonwoods along the St. Mary River. To promote cottonwood recovery, a systemic restoration approach was applied by improving critical components of the flow regime, and initial assessments showed successful seedling recruitment. This research provides a longer-term assessment by comparing sapling distribution and growth among six regulated and free-flowing river reaches. Sapling patches along the lower St. Mary were very sparse (14% of reach) compared to those along the similarly-regulated Waterton River (82%). This disparity highlighted different conceptual models of degradation and restoration trajectories. Reach mean sapling diameters were strongly positively related to average spring river levels (R2 = 0.987), indicating that growth along the lower St. Mary may be hindered by low flows. However, more variation in sapling size occurred at smaller spatial scales indicating that site-level factors like density are also important determinants of growth.

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